by Ian Donnis and Scott MacKay

Roberts to lead healthcare panel for Chafee

Governor-elect Lincoln Chafee is set to tab Lieutenant Governor Elizabeth Roberts to lead a panel on implementing the Democratic health-care reform plan in Rhode Island. He told me the following earlier today:

This is a great chance to work together. She has already spent four years working on this very, very important subject, so I look forward to working together again. That’s the key to success.

Beyond drawing on Roberts’ expertise in health-care policy, this selection also dovetails with Chafee’s riff on running a different kind of government, since he’s an independent and she’s a Democrat.

Chafee demurred when asked whether he’d like to see his good friend, Warwick Mayor Scott Avedisian, run for Senate in 2012. Like Avedisian, he calls such talk premature. But by 2014, Roberts could be one of Chafee’s main rivals for a second term.